Imee hopes Recto won’t push for additional taxes

MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Imee Marcos is urging newly appointed Finance Secretary Ralph Recto to strengthen the country’s tax collection system first, instead of talking about “trillions of taxes.”

“Don’t talk of trillions and trillions in taxes for an introduction as this would only lead to tension. We know that the economy has not yet recovered. Even giant corporations are struggling with slow business. So it’s really necessary to take it slow,” Marcos said in Filipino in an interview over the weekend with dzBB.

Her advice came after her brother, President Marcos, appointed Recto last week to head the Department of Finance – the agency responsible for the management of government finances, including policy formulation, revenue generation, resource mobilization, debt management and financial market development.

Recto has vowed to do his best to hit the government’s target of collecting around P4.235 trillion in revenues this year, adding that he would make sure the money is spent wisely.

But Senator Marcos said that instead of pushing for additional taxes, Recto should push for proper tax collection. She revealed receiving information that the government collected only 20 to 30 percent of taxes, mostly from regular wage earners and sparing big companies.

“For me, let’s fix tax collection first because there are many seepages, many are not collected, from gasoline for example. Many (people) say that only 20 to 30 percent is taxed,” Marcos said.

This is aside from “a lot of smuggling in the Bureau of Customs (BOC). It (smuggling) is endless,” she said.

Marcos noted that it is because of similar problems that the management of Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority was changed recently.

“Even in Subic, we know the bribes. That’s why the leadership is changed once more. What I think is we should just focus on strict tax collection… those corporations that are said to have often skipped taxes should be prosecuted,” she said in Filipino.

She added that, “in the BIR (Bureau of Internal Revenue), there are a lot of kickbacks. We know that it is really chaotic.”

Marcos also questioned why the government is focused only on wage earners or salaried employees.

“Those regular employees will have their salaries deducted immediately for tax while the big companies, they are very undertaxed. The bulk of the taxes are being collected from wage earners. Why should you burden the wage earners when their salaries are low, the inflation rate is high, and they have no additional income? Why should you give them an additional cross to carry?” Marcos stressed.

She revealed that Recto was the first choice of her brother to head the finance portfolio, though former secretary Benjamin Diokno initially took the helm of the DOF.

“Let me tell you the truth, I thought Sen. Ralph was the one who would be appointed after the elections. That’s exactly what I thought, I was joking with him, maybe he doesn’t want to accept it right away because he supported Isko (former Manila mayor Isko Moreno) in the past election,” she explained.

Like other senators, the senator praised Recto’s qualification to head the DOF.

“Ralph (Recto) is good, his knowledge of the economy cannot be underestimated, and he served as NEDA chief before. But I hope he has learned about the problem with EVAT,” she said, referring to the expanded value-added tax.

Recto lost his bid for the Senate in 2007 after he pushed and worked for the passage of EVAT.